There are those who believe in speeches. We should not fall for words. Words have many purposes, often to convince us to believe in lies. There are those who believe 45’s projection of violence, rape and drugs by southern immigrants. They fall for something without a drop of evidence. Some of these people donate money to build the wall.

If you want to learn the meaning behind a request, look at what is used to convince you. Does the request greatly threaten you? Is your idealization and belief manufactured by it? Is it like a kidnapping where you fall in love with the person who abducts you? That is call the Stockholm Syndrome. You fall in love with your captor in hope that love will keep him from murdering you.

Shutting down government is like a kidnapping that is spreading like a plague. People who examine luggage in air ports are unpaid and often call in sick; workers, did not stop a man from walking by them with a gun. Sea rangers, national park rangers are not there to take out the garbage and guard trees; so many people without food stamps, without money to pay the rent, car insurance, mortgages, losing their houses, medical care, survival.

This presidential withholding of Federal assistance is no coincidence. Those who say that “45” has no idea of how Federal money is used are right and wrong. He may not know the details but he knows how to make demands.

You know how “45” loves tyrants like Putin in Russia and Duterte in the Philippines who has vowed to kill everyone connected with the drug trade and everyone else who opposes him. Trump sees goodness in who those who suck the wealth into their own pockets and kill to get things done.

And 5 billion is only a starter. The wall will cost must more to cover the area and of course will be ineffective. It is not hard to dig a tunnel. Only the animals seeking a larger area to find food and sexual partners to spread and strengthen the herd, these will perish. Drug dealers do not march to the US across deserts. They come in planes and trucks.

The immigrants come from communities where death is visiting in the hands of drug dealers demanding money, membership or both; they come from, communities where US vegetable factory farms, supported by Congress, under price the local farmers and put them out of business. Few raise corn in Mexico now. Who can afford to make tortillas. Do we know this?

The US, our government is creating hordes of terrified and starving people who come to our borders, particularly to save their children. Our corporate supported elected officials keep silent and will not vote to end the government shutdown. Mitch McConnell will not do it. How do we react to official paralysis, fear and greed? The French “Yellow Jackets” are in the street about being out priced and overlooked. They outnumber the police and are ever growing numbers. The Prime Minister is worried.

Beset by government shut down, are we US citizens, merely going to sit home, hold our breath and pray?

I have let so many thoughts and feelings go bye that I think I have lost the touch. How do you know when giving up is a good thing or actually on the way to doing a better thing? It all depends on why.

I learned to give up half-way to some landing place from a family that trampled on my ideas and behavior as soon as they heard or observed them. I learned to avoid their hatred by giving a up first. I maintain my connection to these rejecting folk by doing to myself what they would do.

So getting on with things in my world of doing: what is my next to do thing after writing this piece. I want to look into how to build a garden on my apartment building roof. Can the place afford it? How much will a large garden cost? How much will it save in electric power for the building to cool itself in summer, heat in winter? Imagine how good it will feel to sit beneath parasols in summer; the pleasure of gardening and selling the vegetables or eating them. Imagine the joy of creating something that lives.

What is first on your list? If you have no list, dive into your imagination and do whatever comes up. No quitting now. We are not caring about whether the idea is bad or good. Do not be afraid of being a wild youth again or for the first time. Remember how Alice met the Red Queen after eating the magic mushrooms which gave or took away height. We all can grow or shrink that way.

It’s all a game. The game of life.No winners and no losers. Just the need to stretch in all directions. Do what calls you first. Then do what calls you next. Live.

Let’s think about how those who profit from the oil or gas or coal. They seem to believe that when the end comes for the rest of us, that they will be saved by money. You know the rich on the upper deck of the Titanic got into the rescue boats and perhaps 500 of them survived. A very few in that unique killing event.

But what about the poison they create which effects us all? What about the chemicals in almost everything we eat? What about the storms and drought, the edible plants dying in the spreading desert, disease causing bugs coming to us northerners as winter becomes too warm to kill them, bugs that will bite and sicken and kill us: Lyme Disease, Dengue fever, malaria, and on and on…. The oil/gas/coal people, the money people if they even pay attention to it believe they will survive.

Last week, the Trump administration decided to send seismic waves of sound through the Atlantic to find oil. Oil! Just what we need more of to heat the planet to the point where little or nothing lives. The sound will deafen most of the listening mammals, the seals and porpoises and destroy just about every other small, ocean-living creature for a thousand miles.

Trudeau, the so-called moderate PM in Canada, is attempting to sell the tar sands oil to us and to whatever country will buy it. Tar sands oil is so contaminated with soil, clay, sand, water and bitumen, a heavy black viscous oil that it grinds holes in the common pipes until they burst and contaminate huge sections of land and water. Trudeau also acts as if he is a compassionate live-forever person.

I call it a sickness. The super-rich need to rape Mother Earth to have “more” money. They force pipes deep into the earth to extract oil. These pipes leak, sometimes explode and burn for days. When oil pipes leak or burst into the ocean they create a dead zone. Oil owners put a chemical which makes the oil debris sink as if it is harmless. It is only a ploy; Nothing can live there in the oil waste.

They put unnamed chemicals (protected by ownership) into the soil to extract gas. These chemicals travel underground and poison the water in nearby wells. They blast off the tops of mountains to gather coal. Those living in villages down below the mines are flooded and murdered by the deluge of coal ash released by the breaking walls of coal ash waste pits. Chinese cities, some Polish cities have un-breathable air due to the pollution of burning coal.

The super rich oil/gas/coal barons give into their need to extract more. They cannot imagine investing in non-polluting energy from wind, rain, geothermal. They cannot think of stopping the expansion of wealth. They do not think of leaving the world a better place. Creating “green jobs” would benefit us all.

Governor Cuomo said that bringing Amazon to Long Island City is totally without cost, an all for us viewpoint. Authors these days dare not use the word lie when writing about something claimed that isn’t so. Why? Who is meeting their boss’s pay? The money that Amazon will receive for moving to Long Island City is 3 BILLION DOLLARS. And you know that Amazon wants to be in NYC so no one needs to pay it. This is another example of the rich getting richer at the cost of the middle class and poor.

The goal of Amazon is to eventually run accessibility of the public to all business which means kicking some out, setting price and taking fees. Their jobs will pay only minimum wages and workers will soon be replaced by robots (AI). The workers are so afraid of being terminated that they dare not go to the bathroom. Everything is counted. Men pee in available cans. Some collapse from exhaustion.

Rather than bringing riches to the community, small stores will be undercut by Amazon who does same day or next day delivery, and will have to close. Then of course the Amazon prices will change. People will fall for its delivery system and lose sight of their neighborhood, all its shops and sales people on whom they depend and have long-time relationships.

Amazon workers, many imported, will need housing. Rents will soar beyond the local worker’s ability to pay. Coffee shops will arrive that charge $7 for fancy coffees. The schools will be over crowded along with the trains and buses. Public services will be strained. While fancier, the community will become unlivable.

Can we stop the arrival of Amazon? Our Mayor Bill de Blasio, claims bringing Amazon has no negative consequences. Even the local unions are not raising their heads above the trough of propaganda in order to count. That money, the 3 BILLION DOLLARS can go for schools, now crowded and falling apart, to fix the subways, to fix and add to all the city facilities that keep New York a remarkably pleasant place to live.

Letting giants take over to fund Bezos, the most wealthy man in the world ain’t worth it. We need to speak up. Need to call our Mayor de Blasio. Tell him what we think of his supposed beneficial choice. Tell him to change it while he can. If enough people raise their voices, it is amazing what can happen.

Trump believes in global warming. That’s why he is asking Ireland to put a fence around his golf course. The so-called leaders, almost all in the pockets of corporations, claim not to believe but that largely is a lie. The truth of the matter was recently shown by the government’s willingness to allow cars to pollute even more than they do now because they accept that we are fated to set the world on fire so that nothing can survive. To turn away from burning carbon, i.e. oil, means losing money from the corporations in which they are invested. Instead they decide to make as much money NOW as is possible from their carbon investments. Death is shoved to a dark corner of their minds.

In like manner, they want to dig for oil in the Arctic. This will kill innumerable animals including ourselves. They do not believe in switching to green power, living creatively and scientifically and simply in a surviving world. They need to own or buy an endless supply of everything. Better to sacrifice the world to have it now.

This is the most dangerous bunch of so-called leaders the world has ever known. Hitler would kill all the Jews and gypsies. Our current group of tyrants will sacrifice all life. They are willing to sacrifice the future to continue living as they do. Sacrifice is not in their vocabulary. Having it all rules the day.

This is insanity. See the danger that lies ahead and ignore it. Increase your dangerous actions to take more of what remains. Malign those traveling towards our border in quest of safety, food, a place to stay, medicine, for their sick children, The President labels these immigrants invaders and denies what the US has done to make their country unlivable. Throwing a stone towards imaginary dangers distracts us from seeing that they are taking money from our social services. Guns are sold almost everywhere so that the desperate ones can kill fellow sufferers whom they incorrectly blame for their suffering.

A man kills women in a yoga class. He has long hated women. A man kills Jews in a synagogue. He blames Jews for his lack of money. A man shoots blacks in a supermarket after being unable to break into a black church. The un-cared for population is stimulated to attack similarly impoverished people. Violence is revved up against the impoverished by the super rich whose hand is in the till.

Death for all awaits us if we vote for people who are unwilling to change our economy and life to green. Don’t turn against your neighbor. Hold hands and plan for a good-for-all economy. We can do it.

I was half meditating while listening to a listener sponsored radio station when I heard that Trump and company had decided to drill for oil in the arctic, near the Arctic National Refuge and all the rest of that area which is home to whales and herds of caribou and bears and fish and innumerable birds there to have young, … to the creation of life.

Heard a local Arctic Indian beg us not for hospitals and schools and “things”… only to be left alone with all his human and animal brethren to live together as they always have done. He spoke for the “we” to live in harmony. Indians speak about “we.” Modern man, alienated from the world of which he is a member speaks in terms of “I.” I heard the Arctic man speak and began to cry.

Trump and his fellow swamp denizens act as if they have lenses on their eyes which only allow them to see money. Does Trump really believe that the Greenhouse effect is a Chinese myth? Why is he concerned with flooding of his Scottish golf course? Money, gain or loss, runs everything. Like accepting money from Saudi Arabia in return for selling them weapons to effect mass extermination of the Yemen people, dying from cholera, starvation, and bombs; in return for ignoring the recent murder of Khashoggi, a Saudi reporter, Calling Greenhouse warming a Chinese myth allows him to keep his investments in oil, coal and fracked gas. Also, supports fellow swamp dwellers who invest in same. Corporations do not want rivals like solar and wind.

We have been told by climate scientists, that a temperature rise of 2 degrees will wipe out all life on earth. Without a major turn around in how we create and use energy, they give us 12 years to live. Those who are concerned with geothermal chemicals used to ward off the sun, make a more severe prediction. Among these chemicals they put in the sky is mercury. Mercury then falls onto the earth; enters what we eat and breathe, enters the roots of trees which kills them. The trees no longer breathe in carbon and exhale oxygen. They do not absorb water. Dead trees are dry trees. That is one of the reasons California is on fire.

Scientist have found that geothermal spraying is destroying the ozone layer. Government denies that they are doing geothermal spraying. If cornered, they call it experimental and limited. No ozone layer left to shield us, no life. Unless we stop spraying, geothermal scientists give us 10 years to live.

We are overwhelmed. Where to put our energy? War is created to make profit for those who manufacture guns and bombs and tanks. The war corporations can always create new enemies and the newspapers will support them. Many newspapers are in the money trap. We, the voting and tax paying citizens need to become a very large, informed and outraged group which demands that our money go for the survival of all life. Our money, our votes, our intelligence demand it. Do we have any other choice?